Home Office needs to get its act together, says the home secretary

Written by Dods staff on 16 April 2018 in Diary

Diary

Perhaps Amber Rudd could have a word…

“This is a day of national shame,” thundered David Lammy in the Commons today.

Hitting out at the government’s treatment of Windrush generation British citizens, he continued: "Let us call it as it is. If you lay down with dogs, you get fleas, and that is what has happened with this far right rhetoric in this country."

For her part, the home secretary said she was "very concerned about how the Windrush generation have been treated".

Amid confusion over whether some residents had already been deported or not, Amber Rudd also announced the creation of a new Home Office team to fix the problem.

The last-ditch measure comes a month after Jeremy Corbyn alerted Theresa May to the problem at Prime Minister’s Questions.

As for who might be responsible for the mess that today sent the government into meltdown, the home secretary was clear. Ehoing former home secretary John Reid’s declaration that the department was “not fit for purpose”, Rudd stated:

“I am concerned that the Home Office has become too concerned with policy and strategy, and sometimes loses sight of the individual.”

And whose fault might that be? The home secretary will be aware that her department was previously run by the prime minister…